questions to support development

Hi again - and I am developing a list of good questions to support development to share with clients as a part of their GE Feedback reports - could you please take a look at this list and add/delete/change questions?  I want to have a lot of options to pull from as I prepare individual reports...and , hopefully these are useful to all of us anyway as good coaching questions - thanks!

Questions we can ask ourselves to support the 3-4 transition:

·         How did that situation impact my view of myself?

·         How else might I look at this?

·         Where are my “shoulds” coming from?

·         Whose approval am I seeking here?  Do I need positive feedback from others to confirm my assessment of myself?

·         How am I taking that situation personally? Is there another way to understand it?

·         How do I know what the next right thing to do is?

·         How do my current roles define me? How do they limit me? Who am I beyond my roles?

·         When I am  torn between two courses of action, how do I decide?

·         What aspects of my view of the world am I comfortable questioning?  What questions make me uncomfortable?

·         How do I know in my body?  What do I do with that body knowledge?

Questions we can ask ourselves to support the 4-5 transition:

·         How else might I look at this?

·         What values am I holding tightly here?  Is there another possible set of values or approaches to consider?

·         How might I be wrong? Or what are all the ways I might be wrong?

·         Is there a way that this good thing has a downside (or this bad thing has an upside)

·         What meaning am I making from this?  What could other possible meanings be?

·         How do I connect with the wisdom of my body on a regular basis?  How are my mind and body integrated?

·         Can I imagine a way in which my current image or view or understanding of myself is like a a snakeskin to be shed?

·         What are the limits of my meaning making system?  How does the way I think constrain me?

·         How can I seek very different ways of looking at this situation? Who else might have an entirely different perspective on this to offer me?

Enneagram research

My assistant/son put together this list of bullets about the Enneagram research in response to Jane's question.......

ENNEAGRAM

·         The American Psychological Association does not offer Enneagram courses, but there are courses available on the enneagram that are approved by the Association (Helen Palmer of enneagram.com, Jerry Wagner of enneagramspectrum.com, etc.).

·         Many Enneagram books reference The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, of the American Psychiatric Association, but there is no official endorsement. There is nothing on the American Psychiatric Association website that mentions the Enneagram.

·         According to a paper by Lock Haven University, there has been limited empirical evidence that supports reliability and validity based on the works of various studies from 1986 to 2000. [1]

·         Genentech, Boeing, Motorola and the Stanford MBA program have hired Enneagram consultants.

·         Recently published research (2005) based on a type indicator questionnaire developed by Don Riso and Russ Hudson [2] claims to have demonstrated that the nine Enneagram types are "real and objective".

·         Katherine Chernick Fauvre also claims to have statistically validated research that indicates that the three Instinctual Subtypes are real and objective.

·         While some believe that current research does not support the Enneagram's validity (especially regarding the concepts of Wings and the Stress and Security Points), others believe that because of its complex and 'spiritual' nature the Enneagram typology cannot be accurately evaluated by conventional empirical methods.

·         Because of differences among teachers in their understanding of the personality characteristics of the nine types and more theoretical aspects of Enneagram dynamics some skeptics argue that more research needs to be done to test the Enneagram as an empirically valid typology. 

Enneagram

So I am compelled to confess that after Jane asked the excellent question about the research behind the enneagram, half of me was off to the internet to find the answer while the other half stayed focused on the call - and I noticed that I missed some of the important pieces of the conversation and so I commit to not doing that again - will turn my computer OFF (or at least turn it to the wall).

So it is not a robustly validated instrument - though there have been two completed studies to date (at least) with one underway.  The research is listed on the enneagram website:  www.enneagraminstitute.com.  I am going to do a summary of the research and will post it on this site.  Meanwhile, I have signed up for "the inner critic" for October 3-5 in the Catskills and am planning on doing part 1 of the training (like L1 in strozzi, required for certification) in Minneapolis in November.

Where I am with the enneagram generally:  I am seeing it as a useful lens to understand my own personality and that of those I coach (not deep into using it yet as a coaching tool - the book Deep Coaching a resource that I just purchased).  As I mentioned, I am finding the shadow stuff particularly useful in the enneagram and am seeing better how I am seeing, what assumptions I am making - particularly about anger, which is a quality that I detest and deny in myself which is real and powerful and I am (finally?) about to accept and hold as true of me.  (I am a 1, 2, 3 - a two with strong 1 and 3 wings).  As with anything developmental, when we fundamentally question what we see the whole world becomes shaky and unformed for a bit before it reforms into something new, and that seems to be where I am.  I will keep you posted on the research and the connection with the enneagram and the somatics - the tests for the enneagram are on the site and in addition to Deep Coaching the other good resource is The Wisdom of the Enneagram.

Great to talk with all last night, looking forward to posting more and continuing the conversation!

Hogan Stuff

Hello there, friends. Great call today -- so glad we were all there.

Wanted to throw a little bit up in the space regarding what CC was talking about when I chimed in with some of my Hogan Assessments distinctions. A tiny bit of background - Hogan has three different tools - the HPI, which is the closest to MBTI functions in theory but not in name, meaning it talks about day-to-day behaviour; the HDS, which are the derailers or inferior function behaviours, the the MVPI, which look at the motives and values, getting at the "why" behind decisions and actions. For more about this stuff, you can look at http://www.hoganassessments.com/. I'll confess that I think the Hogan folks lay it on a little thick and I don't love how they're selling their stuff, but I have been finding the theory quite useful. If you go here, click on Assessments -- the third button over in the top bar -- and you can see a bit more about the different terms.

For the sake of this conversation, I heard Carolyn talking about her client's potential value for "Recognition," which I describe as values being publicly acknowledged and recognized for your work, prefer to work in place where regular recognition and appreciation are present and will not thrive in a role where you are behind the scenes and a cog in the system.

When this value isn't supported, a derailing behaviour of "Bold" might kick in - which I correlate a bit to extraverted thinking (maybe). I define Bold as: "a stepping forward in a strong, assertive and over-confident way and may be willing to take on people who disagree; may not be open to other opinions or perspectives; may show a strong sense of entitlement and a lack of team loyalty; may overestimate own abilities and ignore shortcomings, blaming mistakes on others; other Strong ambition may drive this and high adjustment may provide even stronger resolve..."

Now these are total shots in the dark (or semi-darkness, at least) and only offer them as another way to think about how this might look. I still am more curious about the emerging 4th order and the potential fragility of that self-authored perspective. The question for me being what does she need to see other perspectives or opinions not as a threat but as another way to see things -- which may be stretching too far toward 5th order? Thoughts??

- MB -

Building the capacity to decline

Hi, GGEG friends! Below is a blog I'm playing with for posting on our company website (www.cultivatingleadership.co.nz, which also feeds to my US site, www.kenningleadership.com). I'm interested in your thoughts before I post on a more public site! Thanks.

I work with a number of clients who are extremely smart, high achieving, successful by societal standards, but can’t for the life of them say “no.” These aren’t weak or indecisive people. They usually have well-honed analytical skills and are required to make difficult decisions on a daily basis. But when it comes to deciding how to spend their time, their ability to choose mysteriously melts away

I’m sure many of you have worked with this person (or maybe you are this person!). She was her high school valedictorian (or something equally high-achieving), went to Harvard (or Yale or…), got a great job, made good money, went back to attend an equally elite graduate school, got another great job, and now she’s in her early to mid 30’s. She wakes up one day and looks back at her achievements. “Yep,” she says. “I sure have done swell….look at all I’ve achieved. Then why do I feel overwhelmed (or unfulfilled or directionless or just plain unhappy)? What the hell do I care about? “ I lovingly call this client the Professional Achiever. All her life, she did the next challenging thing in front of her. Meeting and exceeding others’ expectations, real or imagined, has become her calling card. Achieving is what she is. From a developmental perspective, this person can be thought of as fused with her role as achiever, she is Achiever. Her self-perception is one with her ability to do the next hard thing. And now, she is stuck because her external circumstances increasingly demand something different or perhaps her inner desires have shifted, but she can’t seem to take different action. What to do?

My client, Joe, is one of these. When I started working with him, he claimed to have been aware of his condition for quite some time. He knows he’s unhappy. He describes himself as alternating between blindly taking on all that is asked of him by his superiors and his clients and then, once having reached a breaking point, fuming with resentment and wanting to quit. He can describe his dilemma but doesn’t seem to be able to do anything about it. With the help of the Kegan’s four column exercise, he was able to see that he was caught between, on the one hand, wanting to be more guided by a self authored set of criteria and on the other, not wanting to do anything that might call into question his identity as someone who can rise to any challenge, do what needs to be done. If he didn’t uphold the story he had about himself (and the one he believed others had about him), who would he be? What value would he bring? Who would want to work with him? Stuck.

So we turned to a body-based practice. I am playing with the notion that the body might provide the scaffolding that can help people move from a budding ability to take a larger perspective cognitively to the ability to actually take an action that is aligned with the new perspective. I asked Joe to stand across the room from me. As I walked toward him with my arm stretched in front of me, pointed at his chest-height, I said to him “Joe, I need you to take the lead on the XYZ proposal for a really important client. You’re the only one who can do it because it’s right in the area of your expertise….and it’s due on Monday.” Joe’s assignment was to decline my request both verbally and by gently but firmly moving my outstretched arm off to one side.

As I got close to Joe, he looked down and meekly said “No, I can’t do it,” gently and reluctantly moving my outstretched hand. I wasn’t convinced and gave him this assessment, and he told me this was just how it feels when he is faced with a real-life request. We tried again a few times. Although he got a little louder with each turn, every aspect of his body movement said to me that he hadn’t yet developed the capacity to decline such a request in real life. So I asked him to do the following: center, face into my request, and physically enter into the request. He was to imagine that he was joining energetically with my request and then making the choice to respectfully decline.

The result was surprising to him (but not so much to me). This time Joe faced me with greater confidence, moved slightly toward me, and gently but firmly declined my request and kept moving forward. He was shocked at how different this felt, saying that it was as though something in him came to life, a feeling that he knew where he wanted to go and that my request didn’t fit into his move toward that thing. Accustomed to usually saying “yes” or, very rarely, saying “no” out of anger and frustration (and then feeling bad about that). This felt like something different all together---like holding his dignity, but not so much having to fight for it. This physical exercise allowed Joe to begin noticing how his reluctance to decline lives in his body as well as in his head. With continued practice, he may be able to create new muscle memory that will scaffold this aspect of his transition to a more self authored voice.

i got the notification and apparently I can post

I've been writing while I've been over here in NZ and hope to post a thing (or two) when I get to San Francisco. Stay tuned.....

Can everyone post?

Hi to everyone and wanting to check in to see how this is working and if you can post to the site - also, hoping to get a couple more posts up within the next few days - I hosted an "open space" workshop on the intersection of adult development and somatic coaching at the Georgetown Alum Conference on Friday and we had about 30 people in the room at various times - and some interesting discussion which I will share with you in more detail if this is a good way to do it.  Please let me know if you are getting notices of posts and are able to post, and if this is a viable way to go....if it is, we may have a following at some point....

cheer to all wherever you are....Beth